A trade with Spiegel (in-person)

I completed an in-person trade with cool cat Spiegel of Nomo's Sushi Platter at Dodgers FanFest 2013 last Saturday.  This was my first in-person trade outside of a local card shop since I started collecting cards again in 2009.  I traded autographs of Chin-Lung Hu and John Ely to Spiegel.  Here are some of my favorites from Spiegel's trade package:

Chin-Lung Hu is currently playing for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.  I did not know that team or league existed until I looked up what Hu was doing nowadays.  Hell, I thought he was still on the Mets.  The Matt Kemp card is one of those holographic deals.  I think I still like the old "Rookie Card" logo more than the new one.

1995 Score Gold Rush #238, Orel Hershiser.  It is always nice to get new cards of Bulldog.  Hershiser has some interesting photos on his cards.  Look at that expression he's making on the back of this one!  Great.

1978 Tommy John #375 and 1979 Charlie Hough #508.  Nice condition vintage cards.  What do you think, should Tommy John have been elected to the Hall of fame?  The Dodgers have had quite a few knuckleballers in their history, the most recent being Charlie Haeger.  There was also Hough, of course, as well as Hoyt Wilhelm, Tom Candiotti, Dennis Springer, and Nap Rucker.

Three TTM autographs!  1991 Fleer Ultra Rick Honeycutt #249, 1974 Claude Osteen #42, and a 1991 Fleer Mickey Hatcher #206.

Thanks for the trade, Spiegel!

Dodgers FanFest 2013

Dodgers FanFest was insanity.  I want to start off by thanking my fellow Dodgers-blogging friends.  I do not think I could have lasted the day without them.  Pretty much the entirety of the event was spent standing and waiting in some sort of line.  I had fun, though.  Perhaps more so than mutual interests, mutual commiseration and suffering tends to build bonds.  I like that I finally got to meet several of my fellow bloggers, of whom I have only known by name and reputation for a few years until yesterday.  I will use the photos I took to help tell the tale of FanFest:

I arrived at Dodger Stadium around 10 AM.  You can see some of the outfield construction and remodeling here.

The line to get wristbands (!) for autographs did not seem too bad from this point.  But, then I crossed the ridge and saw that the line seemed to have no end.  Spiegel of Nomo's Sushi Platter fame met up with me around 10:20ish AM.  Spiegel and I had drawn up a cursory plan to get autographs from Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu.  The plan was doomed to fail from the start.  The autograph line must have been at least a mile long because it wound, folded, and curved on itself.  I thought that there must have been at least ten thousand people there, though Dylan Hernandez said that the Dodgers thought the number was closer to 21,000.  After about an hour of waiting in line and shooting the shit, Greg of Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle fame met up with Spiegel and yours truly.

This was where we were a little more than an hour and a half into our riveting line-standing.  It was almost noon.

At some point during our wait in line, Josh Dodgerbobble, Stealing Home and his son met up with the three of us.  Dodgerbobble managed to score himself a Magic Johnson autographed baseball, the lucky duck.  We all traded a few cards and chatted for a while.  Dodgerbobble and Stealing Home left early.  We finally got to the wristband tent some time between 1:30-2:00 PM.  That was a three hour line!  Spiegel, Zakwin, and I each got our one autograph wristband for Hyun-Jin Ryu and proceeded into FanFest.  It wasn't necessarily better inside the event area than what was outside.

On stage right is Matt Kemp playing at DJ'ing and on stage left is Nancy Bea.  As you can see, it was super crowded inside FanFest.  This was the view from where we were standing in line to get Ryu's signature.

More after the jump...